{"title":"Gerald Steinacher","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"humanitarians-at-war-book-gerald-steinacher-9780198704935","title":"Humanitarians at War","description":"The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time.  Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. Yet they did so while interfering with Allied de-nazification efforts in Germany and elsewhere, and coming to the defence of former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. Not least, they provided the tools for many of Hitler's former henchmen, notorious figures such as Joseph Mengele and Adolf Eichmann, to slip out of Europe and escape prosecution - behaviour which did little to silence those critics in the Allied powers who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good neutrality' of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives.   However, in spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49534502076689,"sku":"GOR008300564","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52734526062865,"sku":"NIN9780198704935","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0198704933.jpg?v=1776767081"},{"product_id":"humanitarians-at-war-book-gerald-steinacher-9780198705178","title":"Humanitarians at War","description":"From the brink of dissolution in 1945 to the triumph of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, via the Nuremberg Trials, runaway Nazis, and furious battles with communist critics on the eve of the Cold War, this is the intriguing and remarkable story of the International Red Cross - and how it survived its ambiguous relationship with the Nazis during the Second World War.  The Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world's oldest, most prominent, and revered aid organizations. But at the end of World War II things could not have looked more different. Under fire for its failure to speak out against the Holocaust or to extend substantial assistance to Jews trapped in Nazi camps across Europe, the ICRC desperately needed to salvage its reputation in order to remain relevant in the post-war world. Indeed, the whole future of Switzerland's humanitarian flagship looked to hang in the balance at this time.   Torn between defending Swiss neutrality and battling Communist critics in the early Cold War, the Red Cross leadership in Geneva emerged from the world war with a new commitment to protecting civilians caught in the crossfire of conflict. But they did so while defending former Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials and issuing travel papers to many of Hitler's former henchmen. These actions did little to silence the ICRC's critics, who unfavourably compared the 'shabby' neutrality of the Swiss with the 'good' neutrality of the Swedes, their eager rivals for leadership in international humanitarian initiatives.   In spite of all this, by the end of the decade, the ICRC had emerged triumphant from its moment of existential crisis, navigating the new global order to reaffirm its leadership in world humanitarian affairs against the challenge of the Swedes, and playing a formative role in rewriting the rules of war in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. This uncompromising new history tells the remarkable and intriguing story of how the ICRC achieved this - successfully escaping the shadow of its ambiguous wartime record to forge a new role and a new identity in the post-1945 world.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49634642362641,"sku":"GOR013716138","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737197158673,"sku":"NGR9780198705178","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51153203626257,"sku":"NIN9780198705178","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52693047050513,"sku":"GOR014579429","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0198705174.jpg?v=1751164955"},{"product_id":"nazis-on-the-run-book-gerald-steinacher-9780199576869","title":"Nazis on the Run","description":"This is the fascinating story of how Nazi war criminals escaped from justice at the end of the Second World War by fleeing through the Tyrolean Alps to Italian seaports, and the role played by the Red Cross, the Vatican, and the Secret Services of the major powers in smuggling them away from prosecution in Europe to a new life in South America. The Nazi sympathies held by groups and individuals within these organizations evolved into a successful assistance network for fugitive criminals, providing them not only with secret escape routes but hiding places for their loot. Gerald Steinacher skillfully traces the complex escape stories of some of the most prominent Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, showing how they mingled and blended with thousands of technically stateless or displaced persons, all flooding across the Alps to Italy and from there, to destinations abroad. The story of their escape shows clearly just how difficult the apprehending of war criminals can be. As Steinacher shows, all the major countries in the post-war world had 'mixed motives' for their actions, ranging from the shortage of trained intelligence personnel in the immediate aftermath of the war to the emerging East-West confrontation after 1947, which led to many former Nazis being recruited as agents turned in the Cold War.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50761607741713,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50761608921361,"sku":"CIN0199576866G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199576866.jpg?v=1750694773"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-gerald-steinacher.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}